


The Eyes of the Storm

by Cryptix23



Series: Rare Birds [6]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timeline Versions, Diego Hargreeves-centric, Doppelganger Fight, Gen, Mention of medical abuse, Multi, OP Diego Hargreeves, Sparrow Academy OCs, mention of canon institutionalization, mention of drug use, weaponized self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:15:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26525071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryptix23/pseuds/Cryptix23
Summary: Detective Eudora Patch has a murder suspect in custody. All the evidence points to him, and it doesn't help his case that he's armed to the teeth.Except her gut is telling her he's not the right guy.Eudora is determined to get answers, but she -- and everyone else -- get more than they bargained for when the real murderers show up.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves & Eudora Patch, Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Diego Hargreeves
Series: Rare Birds [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1898632
Comments: 54
Kudos: 168





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's not overt in this one so I didn't tag it, but I want to warn y'all that in this and following stories, the Raptors are involved with each other. It will be made clear that they aren't siblings. If versions of Diego, Klaus, and Vanya being romantic is still a hard line for you: completely understandable, have a nice day.

Detective Eudora Patch was arriving on the scene of a multiple homicide when she first saw him. She noted identifiers almost automatically: Latino male, average height, muscular build, black crew cut.

She wasn't sure what it was that caught her attention. Maybe it was that he was walking away from the scene. Maybe it was the certain something about his bearing that suggested intense combat training. Maybe it was the spiderweb of scars that passed over his right eye.

Maybe it was the gleam of steel when the wind caught his jacket.

Whatever it was, it wasn't probable cause. A hunch, nothing more. She saw him pass and then she closed her car's door and headed into the scene without looking back.

Six dead. Some by bullets from their own guns. Some by deep cuts from an absent edged weapon. An emptied safe. A single fingerprint and an errant black hair.

She was shocked when Beeman brought her results.

"We've got a print match, but you're not gonna believe it," he said as he dropped the folder on her desk.

She opened it, skimmed the contents. Then she stopped skimming and read it more closely. "Is this a joke?"

Beeman made a helpless gesture. "I had them run it twice."

Patch pulled the photos. There were two, taken a few months apart, almost unrecognizable as the same person. The mugshot was very familiar: Latino male, black crew cut, dark challenging eyes. One large scar on his right temple, no spiderwebbing.

"Hey, I know that guy." Rodriguez peered over her shoulder. He was looking at the other photo, the one with the long shaggy hair and the caveman beard.

"You do?" Patch said in disbelief.

"Yeah, he's a new fighter over at that little boxing gym. Think his name's Diego."

"Fighter? At his age?" Beeman asked.

Rodriguez looked confused by the question. "What, thirty? He's not exactly over the hill."

Patch looked down at the photos, then back up at Beeman. He reflected her bafflement back at her.

The file in her hands was for a suspected Cuban terrorist who had been briefly institutionalized in Dallas, Texas under the name 'Diego Hargreeves'. It was also from 1963.

But sure enough, the second time she saw him, he was in a boxing ring. She didn't recognize him.

"I'm looking for Diego," she told the man in the betting cage.

"You another sister?" When she didn't answer, he waved toward the two men sparring in the ring. "Right up there, lady."

One of the fighters was tall and Black. The other -- Latino male, average height, muscular build. Black hair pulled into a short ponytail, groomed circle beard. Thick scar along the right temple. No spiderwebbing over the right eye.

Patch walked up to the ring. "Diego Hargreeves?"

He glanced at her. Did a double take. Held up his hand to his opponent. She noted a tattoo on his inner wrist, an icon of an open umbrella. "Eudora?" A smile tugged at his lips, his dark eyes lighting up.

Patch and Beeman shared a look: why the hell did this guy know her name? And why did he look so happy to see her?

She recovered and found her voice. "Diego Hargreeves, you're under arrest."

His face fell so quickly, she couldn't help but feel a little bad about it.


	2. Chapter 2

Patch considered her perp through the two-way mirror. He sat at the table, fingers laced together in front of him, head bowed slightly. Under the curtain of his loosed hair he kept shooting sidewise glances at the mirror. He was trying to look unruffled, but one leg kept bouncing intermittently. Interrogation rooms made most people nervous.

Fingerprints matched with the one from the scene. Hair analysis hadn't come back yet but she expected a match. Scars could be covered or added with makeup. Extensions could account for the hair discrepancy. Everything fit. Aside from the giant, glaring hole that was the Dallas file.

But it wasn't just that. Something just... didn't feel right. About him. About anything here.

Beeman entered with a cup of coffee in each hand. "You wanna hear the final knife tally?"

"Hit me."

"Twenty-three. Twelve in the shoulder holster, two each in the boots, one in the belt, six more in the jacket. Lab's checking them all now."

"Only two digits. He's downgraded since '63.*"

"You really think he's the same guy?"

Patch sighed heavily. "I have no idea, Beeman. None of this makes sense."

Beeman nodded. "Well, if anybody can shed some light on it--" He handed her the coffees.

Diego Hargreeves looked up when she walked in. A smile flickered on his face before he quickly schooled it back to a guarded frown. Something in his dark eyes stayed soft and sad. She smiled at him and he looked away like it hurt.

Patch slid him one of the cups and sat down. "Brought you some coffee." He took the cup but didn't drink, didn't say anything. "I'm Detective Patch. But... you already knew that, didn't you?" Still nothing. "I just have a few questions for you, Mister Hargreeves."

He snorted. "Diego. _Mister Hargreeves_ is my father."

Ah, that was an anger she'd heard plenty of times before, though usually from younger men. "Diego," Patch confirmed. No need to poke at that particular wound. "Where were you on the evening of the 21st, Diego?"

"At the gym. Working."

"You're a trainer?"

"Custodian. I mop the floor every night. Or, every other night, if I'm busy."

"Busy with what?"

He sighed and took a sip of coffee.

"Okay," she said, when it became clear he wouldn't answer. "So you were working. Then what?"

"Went home."

"Where's home?"

"South Side."

Patch hummed thoughtfully. "Any idea how your fingerprints might've wound up at the scene of a robbery and multiple homicide halfway across town?"

His brow creased with an unexpected expression. Thoughtful, calculating, but the look of trying to puzzle something out, not to concoct a lie. "Where?" He looked directly at her again. "How many dead? What was taken?"

If she was a lesser detective, she might interrupt and remind him that she was the interrogator here. Instead she gave him enough rope to hang himself, as the saying went. She gave him the address. "Six dead. And we don't know. Nobody who knew the contents of the safe is alive to tell us." She watched the thoughts cross his face as he worried his bottom lip.

"What kind of wounds? Lacerations with impact bruising?"

Interesting. "And friendly fire."

"Any kind of... explosives? Energy or force damage? Or... Anything you can't explain?"

"Plenty, but the causes of death were all either friendly fire or a hacking weapon."

"Throwing axes," he murmured. "He was alone." Before she could inquire who 'he' was, Diego slid his chair back to stand. "I need to make a call."

"You had an opportunity, you didn't take it. You'll have another after we're done."

"No, I need to call my family, they need to know--"

She decided to cut his argument off at the knee. "Why do your fingerprints match a terrorist wanted for the Kennedy assassination?"

The verbal ambush worked better than she could have hoped. He went from determined to offended in a heartbeat. "Terrori-? No, now hang on, I was _not_ a terrorist, I was trying to _save_ Kennedy, _and_ the world, by the way, I had nothing to do with... with..." His mouth worked around more words, but he didn't voice them, realizing that what he was saying didn't make sense.

She watched him, one eyebrow arched.

"Shit." Diego swallowed and sank back into his chair. "And now you think I'm crazy."

Patch shook her head. "I think you're a man I've never met who knows my name, carries around twenty-three knives, knows an awful lot about my crime scene, and somehow has a record from thirty years before you should've been born. I'm willing to entertain a little crazy right now, because these pieces are not fitting together."

He sighed. "You... you wouldn't believe any of it."

She leaned forward, folding her hands on the table. "Try me, Diego."

His tongue swiped over his teeth. Dark eyes looked at the mirror, at the camera in the corner, at the table, finally at her.

She waited. People would always talk if you gave them a big enough silence to fill.

"Okay, Eudora," he said, almost to himself. "Okay." He turned his body fully toward her, met her eyes with a gaze that was less steady than he probably hoped. "Do you know the Sparrow Academy?"

She scoffed. "Do I-- Do I _know_ those comic-book rejects who waltz all over my jurisdiction because some weirdo with too much money decided that they're going to 'save the world' and everybody just took his word for it? Do I know _them_?"

He'd started smiling again, the corners of his eyes crinkled in amusement, which was probably the most positive response she'd ever gotten from ranting about the sainted Hargreeves heroes.

One of the puzzle pieces abruptly clicked. "Hargreeves." Patch clicked her tongue. "You're related to them?"

"Sort of."

* * *

A white car pulled up across the street from the precinct. Three figures exited, white suits bright in the grey street.

The Diego with the scars spiderwebbed over his right eye leaned on the roof of the car. "Still don't understand why we couldn't just attack the gym." He scratched his neck.

"Ours is not to question why, ours is but to do or die," Klaus misquoted airily from the driver's side. Without his umbrella, he seemed not quite sure what to do with his hands.

"You can stay with the car if you're scared of the big bad policemen," teased the little blonde Vanya beside Diego. Her expression shifted as Diego rolled his neck. "You okay?"

Diego bared his teeth at her. "I will eat every last one of them alive."

"Kinky," Klaus commented. Diego growled playfully and Vanya giggled. Klaus finally settled on putting one hand in his pocket, signalling with the other for them to follow him.

The three Raptors headed into the precinct, Diego bringing up the back, trying not to look like his skin was trying to crawl off him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *I actually paused S2E1 to read the article about Diego's arrest and it mentions how many knives he was carrying, the number is blurred but it's definitely three digits. I adore this ridiculous man.


	3. Chapter 3

Eudora was silent for a very, very long time after he finished explaining. Anxiety prickled Diego's skin and made his whole body itch.

Finally, she spoke. "So... let me see if I have this right." Not a promising start. "You're a time traveling vigilante from a superhero family, and your axe murderer evil twin from another dimension is why your fingerprints were at my crime scene."

"I'm the one from the other timeline. The axe murderer belongs here."

"Because you changed the past."

"Exactly." He drank his cooling coffee, trying to drive away the dry feeling in his throat. Eudora shouldn't be making him this nervous. On the other hand, last time he'd tried to explain the utter bullshit that was his life to a stranger, he'd been committed and spent three months being drugged, beaten, restrained, and gaslit to try and 'cure' his 'delusions'. So maybe he had a right to be wary.

And maybe he was praying that she would forget to ask how he knew her. He didn't really want to have to relive the last days of their -- what was Beeman's word? -- _contentious_ relationship.

"I told you you wouldn't believe me."

"No, I--" The frustrated creases appeared between her eyebrows. He was all too familiar with those creases. "Can you... prove any of this?"

Yeah, she didn't believe a word. And why would she? If even mister high-and-mighty, chimpanzee-enlightening, moonbase-having, secret-shadow-government-being Reginald Hargreeves didn't believe their story, why would any normal person with a normal person's range of experiences?

He finished off his coffee and rolled his neck. "Can I see your pen?"

The creases deepened. After a moment of consideration, she handed him the pen. He twirled it between his fingertips. Simple retractable ballpoint. Not a knife, but it would do for a demonstration. Now the trick was making it impressive enough that she'd see it was a power. He'd had... poor luck with that part. "See that camera?" He pointed with the pen at the blinking red light in the corner of the ceiling.

"Yeah?"

"I don't like being watched." With a flick of the wrist he sent the pen to his side, nowhere near the right direction. In his mind's eye the motion slowed, the flightpath becoming clear, and all he had to do was just tweak it here, and then here-- It wasn't even a conscious effort at this point.

The pen made two sharp turns upward and jammed into the side of the camera with a little burst of sparks.

Eudora was on her feet. "How the hell did you do that?"

He smiled and started to say something, but the word caught in his dry throat and he had to cough to clear it. Eudora peered at him.

"Hey, are you... alright? You don't look so good."

"No, yeah, I'm fine," he said, rubbing his neck. "It's just... is it a little hot in here?"

She shook her head, clearly worried. Or faking it very, very well.

* * *

Someone cleared their throat. The desk sergeant looked up from her paperwork, regarding the interruption critically. Three people, all conspicuous in identical white suits. The one in the back immediately drew her attention, fidgeting and sweating like a junkie craving a fix.

The prettyboy in front smiled in a way that should have been charming but made a chill run down the sergeant's spine. "We're looking for someone who was arrested earlier today."

"Name?"

"Diego Hargreeves," answered the little blonde lady, coming up beside prettyboy.

"One of you his lawyer?" She looked meaningfully at the twitchy guy with the scarred face. Prettyboy followed her gaze and frowned, reaching out a hand. Twitchy shook him off.

The blonde said, "He's our cousin. We're awfully worried about him."

"We would really appreciate anything you can tell us," Prettyboy added.

The desk sergeant sighed and pulled up the file. The arrest was a matter of public record. "Hargreeves, Hargreeves... Diego Hargreeves. Brought in a couple hours ago on a murder charge."

"He's still here, right? Can we see him?"

"He's with the detective now. You can come back later."

Prettyboy smiled again, and this time something about it made the hairs on the back of the sergeant's neck stand on end. "Where is he being questioned?"

The desk sergeant let her hand fall to the alarm button. "I can't tell you that."

"Well, then what good are you?"

None of the three moved. Ice cold hands gripped either side of the desk sergeant's head. She just had time to be surprised before Allison snapped her neck.

* * *

Diego paced the back of the interrogation room. Eudora hovered halfway between him and the door, torn between concern and caution.

"Are you coming off of something?"

"What? No. I don't do drugs." His protest sounded hollow to his own ears, so he added, "I watched my brother destroy himself, I don't touch anything harder than aspirin." Not willingly, anyway. But he'd already come down off everything they forced into him at Holbrook.

Unless-- his gaze landed on the empty coffee cup. No. Eudora wouldn't-- would she? His eyes flicked to her. She wasn't his Eudora, she looked the same but so did Ben, so did Dad, and they weren't the same people at all, so why would he be so stupid as to assume she was the same?

For her part, she only seemed confused by his betrayed expression. That could still be a trick. She was smart.

Some kind of commotion was starting up out in the station, muffled sounds of shouting and... was that gunfire?

Why did Diego feel like he should hear music?

Everything fell into place. The last time he'd felt like this. The screams, the gunfire, the music. The absolute certainty that Allison and Luther and Five were plotting against him. The sincere desire to murder Luther. The car ride back to the Academy, Klaus and Vanya trying to explain something that Klaus called 'paradox sickness' and Vanya called 'paradox psychosis' and either way meant bad news, and that was before they even knew how dangerous he and Klaus could really be.

Before the other Diego nearly killed Five, and Ben, and Lucia, and Christopher.

"He's here," Diego said.

Eudora dropped back as Diego snatched up his chair and made for the camera. "Who? Who's here?" she demanded. Diego hopped onto the chair to retrieve the pen.

"The other me. The axe murderer." He hopped down and scribbled a number. She dodged again when he reached for her, but he managed to catch her elbow. "Come here, I need you to get out of here and call my family. Tell them the Raptors are here." While he handed her the number with one hand, his other hand dropped from her elbow, skimming to her keys.

She caught his wrist. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Eudora--"

"If this other you _is_ here, if he's after you, we'll protect you--"

"You can't!" In desperation he grabbed both her arms. "Eudora, these guys took out the Sparrows. You _can't_ fight them. They will not hesitate to kill everyone in this building, whether you're in their way or not, and I can't--" No. This time he managed to catch himself before saying the things she really didn't need to hear. " _Please_ ," he begged. "Call my family, evacuate who you can, but _please_ , go."

She stared back into his eyes, and for once he tried to be an open book.

"What are you going to do?"

Ideally? Exact vengeance. Realistically? "Buy time."

Eudora considered a moment longer. Another burst of gunfire seemed to make up her mind. She pulled her keys loose. "Your knives are in the evidence lockup. One condition--" She pulled them back from his reaching hand. "Don't get killed. You owe me some answers."

He smiled shakily. "No promises."

She dropped the keys into his hand.

* * *

Beeman crouched behind one of the desks. His fingers clenched tight around his sidearm, trembling. It might as well have been a cap gun for all the good it would do him. He'd watched Bray and Velasquez open up on the axe guy at point-blank range without so much as ruffling his suit; McGrath had pulled the trigger on the little blonde and gotten his hands blown off; the tall glowing lady with the braids was an _actual goddamn ghost_. He wasn't about to try his luck with the fourth one.

Things had gone quiet. He took a chance and peered around the desk. The little blonde was at the end of the row, her back to him; he didn't see any of the others. He turned back.

The ghost woman smiled at him. "Boo."

He fired on instinct, and she just laughed.

His limbs seized, and suddenly he couldn't move, he was rising into the air on an invisible force and his feet were no longer touching the ground. The man with the long brown curls and the vicious smile hopped onto the desk and folded his lanky legs. "Maybe _you_ can help us," he said pleasantly, eyes glittering like a cat with a mouse. "We're looking for Diego Hargreeves."

"I-- I--" Beeman stammered. Some time-confused weirdo with a knife problem wasn't worth dying for, but the weirdo was with Patch, and Beeman couldn't put her in danger.

Despite his perilous situation, he also couldn't help but notice that the axe guy was a dead ringer for the mugshot version of Hargreeves.

"Yes," the prettyboy said, following his gaze. "The guy who looks like him. Where is he? Don't make me ask again."

"He's-- he's in questioning--" Beeman started, still trying to buy time.

Beeman wasn't the only one hiding in this room. Someone else dove towards the door, apparently hoping they were all too focused on him. He could only watch in horror as the other Diego raised his hand, an axe gleaming, and let fly. None of the other attackers even looked.

They missed when the axe embedded itself into the doorframe. The other Diego's brow furrowed.

Another gleam, a spray of blood and a shout from Prettyboy, and Beeman was suddenly on the ground. Prettyboy clutched at his bleeding hand. A knife-edge glittered red.

"Hey, assholes. Looking for me?"

The first Diego stood atop a desk. His hair flowed in a glorious mane down to his black compression shirt, black on black on black contrasting with his doppelganger's white on white three-piece. Both of them glowed with sweat and trembled with repressed energy.

The Diegos locked eyes, and the pure fury that flashed between them like lightning could have set a wildfire.

Allison, her own face a mask of anger, stepped forward. " _I hea--_ "

" _NO_." Raptor Diego's arm shot out to hold her back, his eyes boring into Umbrella Diego's. "He's _mine_."

Allison looked back. Klaus glowered, uncertain, his own eyes glowing with power. Vanya took his hand to press a handkerchief to it. "Let him have some fun," she said. "You know you want to watch this."

After a moment of consideration, Klaus's eyes stopped glowing, a nasty little smirk curling his lips. The three of them stepped back.

Raptor Diego swept off his jacket. Rows of axes gleamed down his white-clad sides. Umbrella Diego's lip pulled back in a snarl. His hand twitched toward his black leather shoulder sheath. Raptor Diego's fingers curled and uncurled.

They moved at the same time. Hands flashed. Blades sang through the air. Raptor Diego charged and leapt. Umbrella Diego launched off the desk in a flip that carried him over and behind his alternate. Raptor Diego spun in midair and swung. Steel clashed like a thunderclap.

Electric blue energy crackled between them.

* * *

The phone rang. Allison didn't look up from folding her laundry. There were four other adults here, one of them could answer the phone.

After two more rings, it became clear that actually, no, none of them could. Allison heaved a long-suffering sigh. Once again, she was going to have to be the only _functional_ adult in the house. "No, no, I'll get it, don't get up," she called to no one in particular.

She picked up the phone. "Hargreeves residence, Allison speaking." Her eyes narrowed. "Yes, I am. What did--"

The blood drained out of her face as she listened, her eyes growing wide with horror.

" _Luther_!"


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fight soundtrack: "World on Fire" by Les Friction  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqj1hf-KQ2c

The car screeched to a halt outside the police station. Five blinked out of the driver's seat, appearing next to Luther and Allison. All around was a confused babble of raised voices as police tried to get control of the situation in the street. The building itself was deceptively quiet, the only signs of anything wrong being an occasional flash of pale blue light accompanied by a low rumble.

"Okay," Luther said, with authority that for once fitted his designation as Number One, "we can't handle the Raptors and we can't count on the Sparrows getting here in time. So. Plan is: grab Diego and get out. Allison, you get a chance to rumor, you take it. Five-- you gonna be okay?"

Five visibly swallowed, his gaze fixed on the building. "Gonna have to be."

"What are you going to do?" Allison asked Luther.

He took a deep breath. His voice wasn't as confident when he answered. "Whatever I can. We ready?"

"Not at all," Five said. "Let's go."

"Let's do this," Allison agreed.

An officer tried to stop them as they advanced on the building. Luther shoved him aside without breaking stride. They didn't have the luxury of playing nice.

* * *

In midwestern summers, when warm, humid winds blow in from the south and meet dry, cold winds from the north, the two forces begin to turn around each other, rotating faster and more violently until they spawn a tornado.

The opposing forces in the police station were not wind fronts, but they were having the same effect.

Knives and axes spun through the air, their trajectories constantly changing, unable to strike and unwilling to fall. With them sailed pens, badges, mugs, chairs -- anything the blades had knocked into motion and drawn into the fray. Air friction sparked arcs of dry lightning between the flying metal. The tearing blades and scraping debris were beginning to erode the walls and floor, ripping up more pieces to be sucked into the storm.

And in the center of it all, the two Diegos tore into each other, themselves a whirl of swinging fists and striking feet and slicing blades. Both were bleeding. Neither cared. They were evenly matched and showed no signs of stopping.

Klaus, Vanya, and Allison stood just out of range of the swirling debris, watching with equal parts fascination and alarm.

Klaus's curls flew around him in the wild air currents. "This is getting out of hand," he remarked gravely. "Vanya, end this."

Vanya's skin took on the deathly blueish pallor, her eyes going white. She pursed her lips and whistled. The air around her rippled. She swept a hand out and the converted energy pulsed out to knock them both off their feet.

And instead she watched as the energy wave warped, twisted itself into the maelstrom, whipped around and spiraled back out in a resonating basso crash. She just had time to throw up a shield.

The Umbrellas were opening the door when the pulse hit, bursting out the windows and blowing them back into the street. Energy plowed through the walls and brought the ceiling crashing down in a shower of plaster and concrete.

Luther pushed himself up on his elbows, coughing and groaning. "Five? Allison?"

"Here." Allison coughed beside him.

Glass tinkled to the ground as Five rolled over. "Shit."

As the dust began to clear, the three of them stared.

In the remnants of the police station, the cyclone had consumed the falling debris and grown, reaching skyward and darkening the sun. In the eye of the storm, barely visible, the Diegos fought in their own self-made arena, heedless of the destruction around them. Where their blows connected, blue light flashed, the crackling electric blue of a temporal rift pushing them back for moments before they closed again. Their eyes glowed the same blue, literally incandescent with rage.

"Five," Luther said, "What the hell is happening?"

"That was my question," added a new voice. Riley dropped to a crouch next to them, rumpled shirt and tousled hair looking like he'd rolled out of bed and gotten dressed in a hurry. He was still strapping a black bracer around one wrist. Christopher glowed over his shoulder.

"Where are the others?" Allison said.

"Short notice. We were the only ones home," Chris buzzed.

"So: What the actual hell?" Riley said, helping Allison up. "That's Diego in there, right? How is he doing this?"

"He's not," Five answered, in a quiet voice filled with both awe and fear. He had yet to tear his eyes away from the fight within the cyclone. "They both are. Their powers are reacting together and magnifying."

Luther's brow furrowed in confusion. "That didn't happen with you."

"Yeah, it did," Five said, remembering a burst of energy that had thrown he and his younger-older self to the ground. "But I'm trained to recognize and suppress the paradox effects. Diego never got that training."

Back in the ruins of the station, a pile of debris blew apart, unearthing the bubble of Vanya's shield.

"Okay," Klaus said, " _now_ I'm pissed. My turn."

Ice-cold fingers closed on his wrist. He met Allison's worried gaze.

"Don't," she pleaded. "This isn't right, it's too dangerous--"

Klaus's expression softened a fraction. "He can't bend my powers. I'm ending this." He pulled his wrist through Allison's grip and walked away. Vanya reluctantly dropped her shield. The screaming wind immediately whipped through his hair and tore at his jacket.

He moved as close as he dared, until he had to route debris around him, and raised his uninjured hand. His eyes began to glow.

A matching aura surrounded the Diegos. It pulled them apart, raised them struggling and clawing off the ground. Klaus turned them to face him, leveling a glare at his own Diego. Seething, scorching fury radiated back at him.

"Enough!" Klaus commanded.

The whirling debris didn't cease, didn't even slow.

"I said--"

He jolted. It took him a moment to register why he could no longer speak. Vanya and Allison screamed. The Diegos dropped to the ground.

A metal pole-- a broken table leg-- jutted out of Klaus's chest and through his back.

Shocked green eyes, no longer glowing, met Diego's for a moment, and found only rage and triumph before they turned back to his opponent. The long-haired Diego spat red and bared a blood-streaked grin that his double mirrored.

As their fight resumed, Klaus fell, Vanya's hands catching him.

Across the street, the five heroes watched in anxious horror.

"Guys," Allison ventured. "Is Diego the bomb?"

Five shook his head, pale and wide-eyed, sounding far more steady than he looked or felt. "This isn't doomsday level. They'll burn each other out before they destroy more than a block."

"Burn each--" Luther sputtered. "What do you mean, 'burn each other out'?"

"I mean kill each other, Luther."

"No, no, we-- we have to stop--"

"I _know_ , Luther! Just-- just give me--" Five's voice faltered. His white-knuckled fists shook at his sides.

If he hadn't been certain before, he was now: Diego, both Diegos, were fully in the grip of homicidal rage. They wouldn't hesitate to hurt anyone who interfered. _If_ he could even get close enough to interfere -- assuming he could jump _past_ that storm, that he wouldn't move _through_ it and get blown off-course to god only knew where.

He wasn't scared of Diego. He was fucking _terrified_.

And he might be his brother's only chance.

Five closed his eyes, taking a deep, shaking breath. "Riley, I need a distraction."

"Can do, little man." Riley pulled two thick hatpins out of his bracer. "Nerve spasm ought to buy you a second. 'Less you'd rather some broken bones." He calmly reached behind him and positioned the pins against his spine.

"Nerve's fine." If he wasn't so busy working up his courage, Five would be impressed. "If this doesn't work, then start breaking. Everybody else take cover. However this goes down, that hurricane is gonna come apart like a Claymore."

The cyclone was growing. The sky was entirely dark, sunlight replaced by the temporal glow and arcing lighting.

Five bounced on his heels. The same temporal blue glowed around his hands. His eyes followed his black-clad brother. "Okay," he said to no one. "Here goes nothing. Riley, now!"

Riley plunged the pins into his neck.

Both Diegos staggered, numbness and shock washing over them. The cyclone faltered for a moment.

Five blinked. He appeared in front of his Diego, threw his arms around him, and shoved him into another rift. They dropped to the ground behind a police car.

Without an opposing force, the whirlwind unwound with the force of a bomb. Shrapnel whipped in all directions, tearing through glass and embedding inches deep into walls, car doors, telephone poles.

Late afternoon sunlight streamed through the settling dust and gleamed off shards of metal and glass. Rubble skittered in the station as a figure slowly rose, coughing, white suit gray with dust. Blood dripped from a cut in her scalp, and her hands shook as they found a piece of metal lodged in her side.

She stumbled back to Klaus, taking his head in her hands, calling his name. He didn't respond. His arms fell limp when she tried to move him and blood poured from his parted lips.

A groan from behind her drew her attention. Diego, her Diego, had fallen but he was starting to shift and cough.

Beyond him, the Hargreeves and the police were starting to emerge from cover.

Vanya leaned down and kissed Klaus. "We'll come back for you," she whispered through bloodstained lips. Then she staggered to her feet. The sound of her own racing heartbeat rose to a crescendo and pulsed out, just enough to force the enemy back down. She darted to Diego as quickly as she could, dragging him to his feet with an arm over her shoulder. Tearing open a seam on her waistcoat, she produced a small device from a hidden pocket.

The onlookers could only watch as a vertical blue line sliced through the air before her, parting like an elevator door onto a swirling vortex. The two wounded Raptors disappeared into it, and it closed behind them.

"What the hell?" Riley slowly voiced what they were all thinking.

"Five?" Allison called. "Diego?"

"Over here!"

Luther and Allison rushed to Five's side. He was crouched over Diego's unmoving, battered body, checking his pulse with two fingers.

"Is he--?" Luther said.

"Unconscious," Five said. "But alive."

"Hargreeves!"

Four sets of eyes, and whatever visual receptors Christopher had, looked up at the panic-edged yell. Riley hurried into the remains of the police station, Christopher floating after him. Five blinked to follow while Luther hefted Diego into his arms.

Eudora Patch was crouched in the rubble. "Detective!" Riley greeted as he slid to her. "Nice to see you in one... piece..." He faltered as he realized what she was crouched over.

Five appeared, stopped short. "Holy shit."

Patch looked up at Riley. Her hands pressed down on Klaus's chest, the entire front of his suit stained red. "He's still got a pulse, but he's fading," she said.

"Shit." Riley dropped to his knees next to her. "I can't absorb this much. We have to get him back to the Academy. Chris!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I write this whole thing purely for an OTT Diego-vs-Diego paradox fight? Yes. The answer is yes.
> 
> Thank you everyone for the comments and encouragement! I haven't had the spoons to reply individually but I appreciate every one of you so much!
> 
> I do not apologize for this cliffhanger but I DO apologize that it might not get resolved for awhile D: I know what the next story is but there's a lot of elements I need to wrangle to make it come together.
> 
> I might also post a fifth part to this one, just some low-key wrap-up scenes.


	5. Chapter 5

Vanya listened to the phone ring. Once. Twice. "Come _on_ , you asshole, pick _up_..." Three times. Four.

Click. Ben's voice, uninterested, "You know what this is and you know what to do."

The _BEEP_ that followed bored into her skull. She slammed the handset into the cradle and the sharp sound resonated, cracking the plaster around it.

She leaned her forehead against the cool wall, forcing herself to take deep breaths, trying not to focus on the sound of her heartbeat. Letting her anxiety bring the house down ( _again_ ) wouldn't help anyone. Harlan and Reginald would keep trying. She needed to cool down. She needed air. Vanya stalked towards the nearest courtyard door.

She made it as far as the hall steps, where she found Klaus sitting, staring at the front door. A length of ash that had once been a cigarette hung precariously between his bony fingers. Vanya sat down next to him. He didn't acknowledge her until she spoke.

"No luck?"

He turned his big green eyes on her with a too-easy smile. "Looks like the Raptors picked everybody's day off." As usual, his voice was light, but Vanya's sharpened hearing picked up the strained note. Even Klaus couldn't hide that he was as worried as she was.

"Can I have one of those?"

" _Vanya_ , don't you know smoking is bad for you?" Klaus _tut-tutted_ , flicking the unsmoked ash column away with one hand and producing two fresh cigarettes with the other.

The lighter clicked, burning tobacco crackled. Vanya took a deep drag while he lit his own. She stared at the front door through the curling smoke.

"I hate this part," she said. "The waiting. The wondering when you'd come home. Or if. Could never be sure, after Ben."

Klaus puffed a couple of smoke rings. "Yeah," he said finally. "Yeah, this part sucks."

That wasn't the response Vanya was expecting. She looked at him. "But you went on missions?"

"Ah, but see, sister dear, _I_ was the lookout." He leaned his head on her shoulder and batted his unfairly long eyelashes at her. "Which mostly meant sitting outside looking pretty and hoping everyone else came out in one piece. I was _very_ good at the 'looking pretty' part."

Vanya turned this over in her head, recalled their siblings joking (in that vicious, not-really-joking way that kids joke) about Klaus being useless, not carrying his weight. A familiar angry heat pooled in her gut. If Klaus could go on missions without a combat-ready power, if he didn't need to participate, why couldn't she? If Klaus knew what it was like to be left out, all that time, why didn't he try harder to include her?

Vanya closed her eyes and sighed smoke through her nose. That wasn't fair. It had never been fair, to any of them. Blaming her siblings for it now wouldn't help. They were all in this together. They always had been -- even when they didn't know it.

"You know," Klaus's voice broke in on her thoughts. There was a low, sad note of sincerity to it that she didn't often hear when he was sober. Or at all. "I used to try, on missions. I really did. We'd run into a problem and I'd try to contact a-- an engineer or a scientist or somebody's firecracker old grandma to smack some sense into them. But it always took so long to find the right person -- there are _so many_ dead people, Vanny, and the useful ones don't want to just come back and chat. Somebody would always get impatient and solve the problem their way, instead. So I just kinda... gave up on being useful."

Vanya leaned her head on Klaus's. "We were all asshole kids, huh?"

"Well, we learned from the best."

Vanya chuckled, and Klaus grinned.

"And _then_ \--" he said with a sudden vigor, "And _then_ I find out I _am_ useful in a fight, actually, on my own, thank you very much, and it's just in time for us to get sidelined by some paradox bullshit."

"You did say god hated us."

"Well, the feeling is very much mutual."

"You know what?" Vanya said thoughtfully, with the kind of confidence she'd never had growing up. "I don't care what Five says. If they hurt our family, I'm going after them, paradox bullshit or no paradox bullshit."

Klaus craned his neck to look at her. "I'll take your evil twin if you take mine."

"Deal."

"Here, check this out," he said, sitting up. "I've been practicing." He held out his left hand, the lighter resting over the _HELLO_ tattoo, and concentrated. After a moment his palm began to glow softly and the lighter rose, turning lazily.

"Hey, that's pretty good." It didn't compare, of course, to the other Klaus's swarm of glass, or even to Harlan's absent-minded telekinetic stimming, but for a power he didn't even know about until recently, it wasn't bad. Better than getting it all at once like her, she thought.

"Nega-Vanya is _quaking_ ," Klaus said.

" _Nega-Vanya_?" Vanya laughed.

The door burst open. Allison appeared in a flurry, dusty but apparently unhurt. "Klaus--! Good, you're here. Come on, we're leaving. Audra!"

Klaus and Vanya scrambled to their feet. Their questions tripped over each other. "What's going on? Is Diego okay? Where's everyone else? What happened?"

"Diego's okay," Allison started.

She didn't get any further. "You survived," came Sir Reginald's sharp voice from upstairs. He set his hands on the banister, peering down his nose at Allison. "What happened?"

Allison met his eyes with all the confidence of a woman who _could_ brainwash him with a few words, even if she wouldn't. "The others will explain. I have to leave with Klaus, _now_. We're bringing a prisoner."

Sir Reginald had the grace to look impressed.

* * *

In a dark room somewhere beneath the city, a security guard was nodding off, boots propped up on the desk. A lamp glowed steadily behind the guard's shoulder. Beyond the desk, through a pane of bulletproof glass, the lamplight barely illuminated a large industrial room. Massive bulkheads, slabs of buttons and switches and indicators, lay dusty and dark where they lined the walls. Cables and tubes snaked from the sleeping machines to the center of the room, to a platform containing a strange sight: An ornate double-door, crowned in the center of its frame with a gold starburst set with an arrow that pointed off to one side.

It looked, for all the world, like an old-fashioned elevator door -- except that there were no numbers for the arrow to indicate, and no room to connect to. Screens all over the desk showed the door from every angle, proving that there was nothing but door on either side, which made its presence all the stranger.

A red light blinked to life in one of the machines. Indicators buzzed. Something in the door hummed. The arrow twitched, jerkily turned with a grind of long-unoiled gears, came to rest at a sixty-degree angle. The door dinged, loudly.

The guard snorted awake, nearly falling out of her seat. She smacked an alarm button.

The doors of the televator creaked apart, sliding out to the sides, opening not onto a dark, empty industrial room but rather onto a swirling vortex of blue-white light. The two bloodied Raptors resolved out of the vortex. Vanya stumbled, her leg buckled beneath her and spilled them both to the ground.

"Luther!" she cried into the dark room. "Liam!"

The guard picked up the phone.

* * *

Diego awoke slowly.

This was unusual. Hargreeves had trained them all to awaken at a snap, to be ready to roll out of bed and straight into battle.

Which meant he was either wounded or drugged or both.

His brain sluggishly tried to take stock of his situation. Laying down, probably in a bed. Warm weight pressed against his side and across his chest. Steady beeping of a heartrate monitor. The cloying scent of antiseptic and ozone. Hospital, then?

His eyelids took some encouragement to finally open, and one only managed a slit. He expected blinding white; instead he got wallpaper and woodgrain. Familiar. Not a hospital. One of Hargreeves' labs.

He tried to crane his neck to look around, but couldn't seem to get his head to raise. His arms, too, were not responding. He could feel them, he wasn't paralyzed, but they felt unaccountably heavy, like he was trying to lift them into set concrete.

"Why can't I move?" he tried to say, but it came out as an unintelligible mutter. His mouth wasn't responding so well, either.

"Hey, you're awake!" Vanya leaned over into his field of vision, lighting up with what he belatedly realized was relief.

He tried again. It sounded like "A ca a oov?" but apparently that was enough to get the gist of it.

"You can't move because you're full of a shedload of muscle relaxants." Five's voice came from somewhere near Diego's elbow that he couldn't strain his eyes enough to see. "Just in case you woke up still angry."

"You angry?" Vanya asked.

Diego's brow furrowed in confusion. "...No?"

"I _told_ them the after-effects would be worn off by now," Five said.

Vanya smiled and moved out of sight. He heard rustling, little plasticky sounds he couldn't identify, then she reappeared. "Okay, Audra said that should work pretty fast, so you should be able to move again in a minute or two. How do you feel, otherwise?"

Whatever she'd done, it was already taking effect. A feeling like static was prickling in Diego's hands and feet, slowly spreading up his limbs. He flexed his fingers and felt them twitch. And then ache. In fact, as the paralysis wore off, he was becoming increasingly aware of a number of aches and scrapes and probably worse. One eye was swollen; that was probably why he couldn't open it all the way.

"Feel like shit," he slurred.

"You _look_ like shit," Five rejoined. Diego was finally able to crane his neck enough to see Five lying against his side, one arm draped over his chest, forehead pressed into his ribcage. That explained the weight. Five had gotten surprisingly into hugging once he'd given himself an excuse to do so. Diego wasn't sure he'd ever get used to that, but he wasn't about to dissuade it, either.

Vanya gave Diego a sympathetic grimace. "You do."

He let his head fall back against the pillow. "Yeah, well, you should see the other guy."

He almost missed her eyes flickering to one side, but he definitely didn't miss her smile faltering. Diego tried to sit up to follow her gaze. His arms didn't want to cooperate just yet, and Five's arm pulled down on his chest, and Vanya stepped in to gently push him back as well. "No, don't, you need to take it easy--"

It hurt his chest to push against them both, but he managed to get his elbows under him, enough to brace up and see over the edge of the bed.

He immediately regretted it.

Across the room was another bed, and in it was Klaus.

* * *

Diego awoke to familiar voices. His eyes fluttered open. Well, eye. A bandage covered the right socket, and he could feel the way his eyelid sunk in, upper lashes bristling unpleasantly against the lower lid. He was missing his eyeball. Unfortunate, but not an emergency, given it was a prosthetic.

Of more immediate concern was the fact that his hands appeared to be strapped down. He yanked at the straps. Something in his left wrist shifted that definitely shouldn't be mobile. He groaned.

"Good morning, sunshine," came a familiar deep rumble from off to his left. Diego rolled his head to the side to see Vanya resting on a reclining bed, bloody shirt hiked up. Bent over her, tall and fair and proportionately muscular, Luther carefully stitched up a ragged cut in her side with lithe, deft hands. Luther shot him a sidewise glance before focusing back on his work.

Between them was a metal table with a tray, containing an assortment of bloodied metal and glass shards and his prosthetic eye, cracked nearly in half across the iris.

"What happened?" Diego asked, trying to catch Vanya's eye, but she wasn't looking at him. "Why am I tied down? Where's Klaus?"

"Good questions," another familiar voice said from Diego's right. Trust Liam to come in on his blind side. He'd been too preoccupied to hear Liam's entrance. "Where _is_ Klaus?"

Vanya's expression twisted with a pain that wasn't from the stitches. "I had to leave him," she answered at length.

"You _what_?" Diego tried to sit up, straining against his restraints. "The Sparrows were right there, how could you _leave him_ \--"

"I can only handle so much dead weight, Diego!" Vanya snapped. The tray vibrated. The top half of the eyeball slid off with a _clink_ of glass on metal.

Diego went quiet. Liam and Luther let him find his voice. Luther applied a bandage over Vanya's stitches. Liam circled into sight, settling his long slender limbs into a chair, one hand propped up on the handle of a thin black umbrella. Bright blue eyes watched the two Raptors with unnerving intensity that belied his relaxed posture.

"That bad?" Diego said, finally.

Vanya didn't look at him. "He was completely unresponsive. I couldn't get him to come back."

* * *

 _He looks so peaceful_ was the first thought that popped into Diego's head, because it was a thing that he'd read people saying at funerals.

Klaus's skin was ashen, nearly blending into the white sheet and the bandage over his skinny chest. Medical straps bound his wrists securely to the bedframe. Long brown curls cascaded over the pillow and his bare shoulder, where there wasn't a military tattoo from a war he should never have seen.

The other Vanya and Diego and Allison at least had the decency to look different. Diego could look at her blonde hair and her ghostly aura and not see his sisters, could look at that spiderweb scar and not see a mirror. Looking at this Klaus, he just saw Klaus, dead to the world on a hospital bed, covered in wires and leads, and it was a sight right out of his nightmares, a spectre of close calls and anxious nights wondering if his junkie brother had finally gone too far and wouldn't wake up this time.

"He's alive," Five said. Diego realized Five had sat up to look back at Klaus, and he felt cold where the body heat was gone. "Coded once, but... Audra managed to get him back." Judging from the solemness of his tone, Diego wasn't the only one affected by the sight.

Diego dropped back to the mattress. "Did I hurt anyone else?"

"No," Vanya said. "I don't think so."

"You two brought down the precinct," Five said. "But I pulled your dumb ass out of there before you could hurt any of us." He nestled back against Diego's side and held him tight. Diego put an arm around him.

"How much do you remember?" Vanya asked.

* * *

"I remember everything, right up until the end." Diego stared up at the ceiling with his one good eye. "I remember it all, I just don't... don't know _why_."

* * *

"It was like, I saw him, and my vision just..." Diego chopped his hand ceilingward. "...tunneled. All I could feel was this rage. Like he wasn't supposed to exist, or I wasn't supposed to exist, and both of us couldn't exist at the same time. Like I was made to kill him, my entire life was building up to this moment and nothing else mattered."

* * *

"You have no idea how good it felt. How _right_. To be fighting him. Seeing him felt like being torn apart, but every time I hit him, every time he hit me--"

* * *

"--it stitched us back together. And then we tore apart again. And either way it hurt, but it was... _right_. When Klaus interfered--"

* * *

"--it felt like a betrayal. For that moment we were the same person, and all _we_ wanted was to get rid of him--"

* * *

"--to end the interference so we could do what we were there to do. I... I _felt_ our powers come together. That... I can't describe it. We were one. We ki-- we attacked him. We _wanted_ to kill him."

* * *

"No hesitation." Diego squeezed his good eye shut. "God, even saying it-- I _had_ those thoughts, they were _mine_ , but I cant even recognize them, they're so _batshit_. It's like I was somebody else." He opened his eye and looked at Liam, then Vanya, pleading. "I would never hurt him, you know I wouldn't, you have to believe m-- me--"

Liam unfolded to his feet while Diego struggled with the words. "It's okay," he said. "Knowing Klaus, he's making the most of the situation. We'll be here when he gets tired of toying with them. For now, you two rest, and I'm going to see if I can't find out what Reggie's been up to that keeps setting you off. Luther?"

Luther rose and followed Liam out.

Diego closed his eye. Liam's reassurances rang hollow when the restraints still kept his arms bound. They weren't sure he wouldn't snap again. He wasn't sure, either.

He heard Vanya move in the other bed, looked to see her getting to her feet. She winced when she tried to put weight on her left leg. His brow knit in concern and confusion. The final moments of the fight were all a blur, he'd felt a burst of pain and then suddenly everything exploded, but he didn't doubt that her being hurt now was somehow his fault.

"I'm sorry," he whispered as she came to a stop at his bedside.

For the first time since he'd woken up, her eyes met his, and the soft smile on her face about broke his heart. Her hand brushed the side of his face and he leaned into it. "I know." The glide lock on the cuffs didn't make a sound, but his wrist was freed. She moved slowly to his other side and removed that one as well. Then she climbed into the bed, and he shifted onto his side to give her space.

She fitted her body against his, and he wrapped his arms around her, pressing his nose to her hair.

"We'll get him back," she said softly.

"If they hurt him--" he said.

"We'll kill them," she agreed.

* * *

"I should've started you all on paradox suppression training," Five muttered against Diego's side.

"You think?" Diego said with a rueful laugh.

"Better late than never," Vanya said. She'd sat down, arms folded on the bed and chin on her hand. If he looked straight ahead and a little down, Diego could just see both of them in his peripherals.

Despite everything, Five and Vanya weren't afraid of him. They could be. They were the two whose powers he now knew he could manipulate. Five _had_ been afraid of him. Might still be, and this was his way of stubbornly refusing to give it power over him. Vanya...

It was so strange. They'd spent so long _knowing_ that Vanya was no threat, then suddenly she was an unstable ordinance, one wrong move away from explosion. And they were terrified, and they didn't hide it. _He_ didn't hide it. He sat across from her in Elliott's home and implied a threat with a knife, and he panicked along with the rest of them when she tried to demonstrate her powers.

_You've never had to worry about accidentally killing everyone._

Diego turned his head to catch Vanya's eye. She smiled back at him.

"I'm sorry."

Her brow crinkled in confusion. "For what?"

Diego tried to find the words. For being afraid of her. For not giving her a chance as kids. For letting her feel like this. For not giving her the comfort that she and Five were giving him now.

He gave up. "Everything."

That was enough to get the gist across. Vanya took his hand and squeezed it. Five's arm tightened on his chest.

They weren't going anywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "might add a part 5" *proceeds to nearly double the wordcount*
> 
> Some of yall smarties already guessed who Liam is, but whoa, wait, Alt Luther is here too? But that completes the set? What does it MEAN? (okay if you've read the comics or any spoilers you can guess, but let me have my fun.)
> 
> fyi I've been made aware that the showrunner named the Sparrow cube Christopher in an AMA awhile ago and as such will be going back and editing as appropriate.
> 
> Also hey! I'm cryptix23 on tumblr, come say hi! Or check out my artblog cryptixcreations for fanart, I've got Diego covered in kittens and plans for more, including possibly designs for my Raptors and Sparrows? :D


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